During the MTV VMAs, there will be an ad slot for Taco Bell featuring a winner of the "Create your Gizmoz TV Me" contest.  Contest winners will also recieve a Taco Bell $250 gift certificate. So be sure to catch the spot tomorrow, and congrats to all those who made it.

Since Gizmoz release to the public, users have been creating their own videos on Youtube, mostly using celebrity faces and animals. Some of these videos have been featured on the Youtube’s Most Viewed Today. Popular ones depict George Bush and his arch nemesis Osama Ben Laden.

Blingee may be just another site like pikipimp, but its far far easier to use. Blingee’s website is clear from obnoxious ads and crazy pop-ups and gives you the tools to create your trendy blingin masterpiece. One of its notable features is the Fill Area tool. You can instantly add your own background below your photo. Although it works better if you have taken your photo against a white wall. Blingee also allows you to add graphics from other glitter sites like myspaceglitter, in a feature called "Stamps" You can upload any photo and it will shared for other users to create their own images. Adding bling to a picture is as easy as clicking certain spots of where you want it to go. Rotating is done much much better than pikipimp, as it doesn’t squash or stretch it. Of course with using glitter graphic sites, the main drawback is your photos will have poor quality due to Gif Standards. We’d like to see if a site like this could make use of flash and keep pictures high quality with all their bling.

After you have finished creating your picture you must then register, it will then provide you the code needed to direct link to the image. Now Blingee gets a bit ridiculous in advertising considering it adds a black logo on each image. So here’s how we can remove Build Your Own blingee, while keeping the link back to the site. We’re nice people OK  but don’t push us Blingee.

Removing Unnecessary Build your own Blingee Advertisement. Look at the Code Below

<a href="http://blingee.com/blingee/view/17523460-webappsreview" alt="Build your own Blingee" target="_blank">
<img alt="webappsreview" border="0" height="160"
src="http://image.blingee.com/images12/content/output/2007/7/22/67392172_e25eba33.gif"
title="webappsreview" width="106" /></a><br /><a href="http://blingee.com" target="_blank">
<font size="2">Build your own Blingee</font></a><br /><br />

The example above shows a complete code you should put on your myspace. To make this cleaner remove everything you see above thats highlighted in green. Of course your not supposed to use MY code, but you should look at your own code for your own picture and remove what I highlighted. When your done the resulting code will look similar to the one below

<a href="http://blingee.com/blingee/view/17523460-webappsreview" alt="Build your own Blingee" target="_blank">
<img alt="webappsreview" border="0" height="160"
src="http://image.blingee.com/images12/content/output/2007/7/22/67392172_e25eba33.gif"
title="webappsreview" width="106" /></a><br />

Now your done! Enjoy making blingin pictures!

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Today we review 7 up and coming image sites. Will these sites reign as new alternatives to Photobucket, Imageshack, and tinypic? Lets find out!

Photolinko

The site is a bit cluttered with Ads, but is pretty nice and easy to upload. The fun stops here once the image linking codes are shown. Each image linking code has a direct link back to photolinko, including a text link below the image. Its pretty easy to remove it out, but for people who don’t know how to, they’ll have to deal with it. The site has linking codes for Myspace, Forums, and HTML. [photolinko]

Rating: 2 out of 5 stars  

JPEGR

One of the few black interfaces to upload images. Its very clean and tidy. Uploading images are pretty fast, sometimes too fast that the image shows itself as a red box because it hasn’t been processed yet. After a few seconds you can go to the direct link of the image and it will load correctly. Linking codes are clean and nice. The site has linking fodes for HTML, and Forums. [jpegr]

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars  

img.la

img.la reminds me of the heiress Paris Hilton. With its sleek and sexy design, the forms move up and down moothly allowing you to upload your image and read more information while its being processed. Unfortunately, just like Paris Hilton, the site was too stuck up that it didn’t want to give us the linking codes to any image and failed to show us where the image uploaded to. This site has failed due to bugs. [img.la]

Rating: 0 out of 5 stars  

thumbq

The site was pretty simple, it had some ads though. There are 5 forms to upload images. The linking codes were only to a direct link, it didn’t have any other options. [thumbq]

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars  

xmgimage

You have to sign up inorder to use this site. Which is unfortunate to people who want a quick linking code. The site also provides a nice image editing tool but without any undo options for some strange reason. Linking codes can be directly inserted in your myspace by login information (Web Apps insists that you don’t give any website your Myspace Login Information). Instead you can direct link, or choose Friendster or Facebook share. [xmgimage]

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars  

imagehigh

Imagehigh has a large form to upload as many images as you want as long as you abide to the terms of service. They even put a scare tactic saying your IP has been logged for who knows what.. Anyways as we were trying to upload the image, it redirected us to a blank page and we don’t know where our images went. This site has failed due to bugs. [imagehigh]

Rating: 0 out of 5 stars  

bayimg

bayimg is the Pirate Bay’s image hosting site, promissing that images won’t go down with DMCA notices unless they are "illegal". Bayimg requires every image have a removal code. You can also upload images within a zip file as an album. Direct linking isn’t shown after you upload the image, you’ll have to right click and select properties to see the direct linking URL. [bayimg]

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

OneDump came along to the file hosting market with 3 simple choices. You can host your Mp3s and even hotlink them for Myspace Flash Music players. You can host your pictures and spread them on forums and websites. You can also host your terrible fanfiction stories as .txt or .doc files. There’s some good things going on at OneDump though, for instance, its not bombarded with advertisments, it allows adult images,  and there is no bandwith limits. Remember though, with every other file hosting site, copyrighted files have a higher chance of being deleted from the server. You can also register incase you want to keep track of your files.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Image sites like pikipimp lets you dress your photographs and add any "cool" glitter style graphics on top of it. Its clear they are attracting the Myspace crowd with their blingy text and animations. The user gallery shows pretty much the main audience of the site. Its scary seeing how many teens add cigarettes to their photos, but we’ll just focus on the app itself. First you upload an image. Then click and drag any elements on the side such as hats, chest hair, bikinis, headphones, glasses, and even scars. The app is nice enough to include rotation and effects for power users. I’m not too fond with its rotation engine. Instead of a full rotation, the element gets squashed within its "box" causing it to become disproportioned. Because of this, you’ll have to manipulate the box’s size to get back the aspect ratio you want. Clicking effects opens up a toolbar filled with all sorts of goodies. You can change the saturation, and color, or even motion blur on the fly. Each effect loads pretty fast and thats good for the savy hungry beast of Myspace users.

After you have finished amd saved your image, pikipimp adds a bar at the bottom advertising back to the site. I don’t like this at all and would rather pikipimp just use the link back to the site just as they do in their embed code. Its not so hard to photoshop the bar out of the picture but I guess the average myspace  user won’t know how to do it. Another gripe I have is that whenever you add animations, the image is set to gif and greatly reduces the quality of your picture. I know its something they can’t avoid given the limitations of .gif colors. However, I think in the future it would be nice for them to create an embeddable flash widget that hosts the image.

 Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

Well we’ve seen 3D avatars before and some of them are pretty slow or they charge you money. Gizmoz brings up the standards for 3D avatar sites, by doing all the work for you. You can upload your face and have it wrap around a 3D model. The end result is beautiful, something you’d only see at professional sites. Faces can now look up at the sky or look down at their feet. You can also record and make it talk in your voice. Make sure your voice is loud and clear so it can correctly sync up with your voice.

After you upload your photo, it takes a while for it to correctly wrap the face around. While its loading you can look around at the different clothing you can dress yourself as. Points are given every time you create a gizmoz or post a widget to your blog or Myspace. When you accumulate enough points you can spend them on special costumes and clothing. They also plan to allow you to buy Gizmoz points if your ready to jump in. I like Gizmoz’ kid friendly atmosphere, although I feel they may be going a bit too kid friendly with the Demo’s squeaky high pitched voice. I did not like that you have to register to make a face but it might weed out any spammers who use it. I don’t see much cons with the service other than long loading times for each time you change the voice.

 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Pictogame’s premise is simple. Take a picture from your computer, edit what’s seen and choose a game. Thats all there is to it. There’s a bunch of different styles to choose from. From the standard busting blocks with a ball, kicking people, and busting zits. You can also choose the quiz game which selects random questions on a board. I like pictogame’s simplicity, it doesn’t take much effort to start creating your game. Unfortunately the quiz show doesn’t allow you to create your own questions and I’m sure if they allowed this, swarms of kids will flock to the site. Nevertheless its not bad but just needs improvement. Once your done you can post your game on myspace, you don’t have to sign up to pictogame when your ready to embed.

Click “Skip Signup” and it will send you directly to the embed code. You can also choose to login directly from the site but you should always be wary of giving sites your login information. You should paste this code by going to Myspace yourself.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Flektor allows anyone to create their own Myspace widget where you pick and choose which applications your viewers will see first. Now you can integrate all your Myspace crap into one flash app.

Flektor offers a Quick Start for users who don’t want to register to quickly start the basics of their widget. Unfortunately, loading the app is pretty heavy, and does a drain on your resources. Registering is the only option if you seriously want more control over your widgets. Here you can add your own photos, music, and videos. I don’t recommend using Flektor as a music player only because the audio quality is terrible and not worth your time. After you upload your media you can drag and drop them into the time line. You can add special effects such as transitions, or one of its coolest features titled ”Zingers”.

Zingers overlays a special effect over the slide. You can select the “Bus Ad” zinger, which places your photo on the back of a moving bus. You can also add the infamous glitter text for all you tacky girls out there. The customizations are well put as you can edit the size, spacing, and effect of each text on the fly. Tired of seeing too much Bling? You can change it back to normal in just one click. After you’ve finished making your slideshow masterpiece, you can publish it for all to see.

Here are some Quick Tips for Myspace

In the Embed options for Myspace, select “Start Playing Flek automatically.” Add some transition time before your “main attraction”. This is so that your audience has enough time to see your flek before the slideshow finishes. Change the length of a slide by clicking the pencil tool and dragging the duration time to the right. Instead of using songs, add your voice to your Flek for a personal touch. Keep in mind the length of the whole presentation or else you may discover the audio will fade out at the end.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

I get so tired of all the lame, crappy, myspace layout sites out there. Most Myspace layout sites are either extremely hard to navigate or provide horribly designed crud only a mother would post on the fridge. So now we send in the experts at LoveMyFlash. LoveMyflash does a complete makeover on how sites are designed. Now instead of static pages full of glittery mess, we get a fluid motion page which focuses on the content. It takes about 2 big lines of code in the About Me section and the Who I’d Like to Meet section to add it to the page. One thing to remember is that you HAVE to add your myspace URL before you create the code, or else your page will have empty graphics and wrong information. MyFlash unfortunately doesn’t provide the code with shrinking picture sizes in the comments area. So instead  here’s a code you can put at the bottom of the Who I’d Like to Meet section so that your friend’s comments won’t mess up your layout.

Paste This Code at the Bottom of Who I’d Like to Meet Section

<style>   body table tr table tr td.text table tr td.text table tr td table tr td img {width:200px;}    body table tr table tr td.text table tr
td.text table tr td table tr td div img {width:80px; height:20px;}     body table tr table tr td.text table tr td.text table tr td table tr td
a img {width:100; height:auto;}       </style>

If you have any more suggestions to other high quality MySpace Layout sites, post a comment.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Picnik is that image service I’ve been requesting for a long time. I wanted something where I can quickly come in and edit some photos and leave at the end of the day. Now I’ve finally see my dreams come true in Picnik. You can call it an online version of Picasa, or even Photoshop Elements. Basically all the image editing features from the sometimes resource hog Picasa, is placed into this online editor. You can additionally use some special effects to make your photos bevel or stand out in color. This site doesn’t require that you register but you can if you want to, although I believe its pretty pointless since it doesn’t store your previous images you sent. Sometimes the initial loading times can freeze your browser for a few seconds until it finishes. A huge gripe is that its extra “PRO” features will only be available to paying customers. I’m sure this website can gain a household name and can make money off of ad revenue somewhere on the site. Once your finished editing your photos, you can save them onto your PC or email them to an image hosting service. Thats pretty much all it does, and since its in Beta, there’s much more that can be added.

Picnik is a online image editor and currently does not have any embeddable widgets.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars